The Croatian city of Vukovar, on the banks of the Danube, has a painful past. Located on the border with Serbia, it was the scene of the first major battle in the 1990s Balkan wars. Four years before the genocide in Srebrenica and eight years before the war in Kosovo, Vukovar was the first city in the former Yugoslavia to suffer ethnic cleansing, in 1991. More than 30 years later, reconciliation between local Serbs and Croats is hindered by impunity for war crimes and the inability to agree...

Fifty-three years ago, Bangladesh finally obtained independence from Pakistan, at the cost of a war that left nearly 3 million people dead. Since then, the nation has developed into one of Asia's most dynamic economies, thanks in particular to the textile industry. The garment industry brings in more than $55 billion a year, making Bangladesh the world's second-largest clothing exporter, just behind China. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look at the Bangladesh of today, a country that has fully...

The Jordanian city of Zarqa has a strong Palestinian identity, with good reason. In 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel – what the Palestinians call the "Nakba" ("catastrophe") – some 750,000 people, or more than 80 percent of the Palestinian population, were forced to take exile in neighbouring countries as they fled the violence. Jordan took in around 100,000 of them, with many of these refugees settling in Zarqa, a desert area on the outskirts of the capital Amman. Seventy-five...

It was one of Spain's deadliest terrorist attacks in history. On the morning of March 11, 2004, ten bombs exploded almost simultaneously at the Atocha train station in the Spanish capital Madrid. Nearly 200 people were killed and more than 1,500 wounded. Twenty years later, survivors of the incident are still waiting to know the truth behind the bombings.

A century ago, the "manufacture, sale or transportation, importation or exportation" of alcohol was strictly forbidden across the United States, a policy that left an indelible mark. Nine decades after the end of the Prohibition era, which lasted from 1920 to 1933, some states and towns in the United States still remain "alcohol-free". Our correspondent Fanny Allard reports.

In the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, one road symbolises the complex relationship between Lebanon and neighbouring Syria: the aptly named Syria Street. With the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, Tripoli street also become a conflict zone. On one side, the Alawite district sided with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Sunni neighbourhood on the other side supported the rebels. For several years, the street was transformed into a battlefield. Young Lebanese living in Tripoli...

An historic trial opened on January 8 for the West African nation of The Gambia. Ousman Sonko, a former high-ranking member of the dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh, is in the dock in Switzerland for a series of alleged crimes against humanity committed between 2000 and 2016. Victims of the dictatorship have high hopes for the trial. FRANCE 24's Sarah Sakho and Simon Martin report.

As Taiwan heads to the polls for a presidential election on January 13, we look back at a dark chapter in the island's past. Almost 80 years ago, on February 28, 1947, tens of thousands of Taiwanese who had risen up against the government were murdered. It was the start of the "White Terror" period. For 40 years, the Taiwanese were deprived of their freedoms, wrongly imprisoned or even executed. In 1987, with the lifting of martial law, Taiwan began its march towards democracy, and three...

Between 1952 and 1960 in Kenya, the Mau Mau rebels who rose up against British rule faced a brutal crackdown that killed thousands of them. Left out of the history books for decades, these independence heroes are now fighting for recognition before the last survivors die out. Our correspondents report.

Thousands of Silicon Valley employees have been laid off over the past year, often finding out the bad news by email. Hit hard by rampant inflation and over-hiring during the Covid pandemic, the US tech giants of the San Francisco Bay Area have faced one of the worst crises in their history. A few months ago, a banking crisis added to their woes, when Silicon Valley Bank went bankrupt, before being rescued by the federal government at the last minute. Nevertheless, the tech sector – renowned...

The city of Raqqa symbolises the tragic fate of Syria over the past 12 years. From the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, the northern city was a major target for rebel groups. It then became the stronghold of Islamic State group terrorists, who made Raqqa the capital of their self-proclaimed caliphate. The city went through three years of hell – suffering atrocities, public hangings and slave auctions – before being bombed and then liberated in 2017 by an...

Some Argentinians carry a heavy family secret. Under the country’s military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, their fathers were police or military officers. As such, they were responsible for the disappearance of up to 30,000 people, according to human rights groups. These men have since been accused – and sometimes convicted – of crimes against humanity. After decades of living in shame and silence, some of their now grown-up children have decided to make their voices heard and recount their...

In this edition of Revisited we head to Canada to discover the diversity of the country's French accents and cultures as the use of French in the mainly English-speaking country declines. From Port Royal in Nova Scotia to Toronto via New Brunswick and Quebec, what remains of the 18th-century colony of New France? Our correspondent reports.

As record numbers of migrants continue to arrive on the small Italian island of Lampedusa, FRANCE 24 looks back at the shipwreck of 2013, which saw 368 people drown off the island. Our reporters met a witness to the tragedy, a survivor and the island's doctor who registered the deaths. All of them want to put an end to these shipwrecks, which have made the Mediterranean the deadliest migrant route in the world.

It has been 50 years since Chile's military junta came to power. On September 11, 1973, the army headed by General Augusto Pinochet launched a coup with the US' covert backing. Soldiers took over the presidential palace, ousting leftist President Salvador Allende, who committed suicide. Pinochet then stayed in power for 17 years, a period of dictatorship that saw more than 3,000 people killed or missing and around 200,000 fleeing into exile. Even today, the constitution that was tailor-made...

During the Cold War, the US military conducted manoeuvres in Spain’s Andalusia region. On January 17, 1966, a bomber and a supply plane collided in mid-air. From the belly of the bomber, four thermonuclear bombs fell to the ground. There was no nuclear explosion, as luckily they were unarmed. But they scattered highly radioactive plutonium over 250 hectares around the sleepy farming village of Palomares. The US tried to downplay the incident and quickly cleaned up the site, but left 50,000...

Back in 2015, Guatemala's President Otto Perez Molina was forced to resign before being eventually found guilty of fraud and criminal conspiracy. His downfall seemed proof that impunity for corruption was not inevitable in a country plagued by 40 years of civil war. Perez was the prize catch of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), but this victory was short-lived. In 2018, the Commission was dissolved by the new president, Jimmy Morales, whom it was...

In 1953, a gigantic storm swept across the North Sea and caused a tidal wave in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. Many dykes controlling water levels were simply swept away as the water spread far inland. While more than 300 people died in the UK, over 1,800 lost their lives in the Netherlands. At the time, around a fifth of the Netherlands was below sea level. More than 2,000 square kilometres of land were flooded there, including almost the entire province of Zeeland. Protective...

In 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place. It was a courageous act of resistance against the Nazis by several hundred Jewish fighters.  Since 1941, the Jewish population of the Polish capital – approximately 400,000 people – had been confined by the Nazi occupiers to a small neighbourhood in the center of the city. Many died as a result of starvation and diseases there. Others were sent to the Treblinka death camp. 

Back in 2018, the signing of a peace deal between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his longtime rival Riek Machar created hope and optimism. The people of South Sudan, an independent nation since 2011, were emerging from a brutal civil war. However, five years later, this peace agreement is mostly respected only in Juba, the young nation's capital. Elsewhere, the fear of conflict remains palpable – a fear that has been further accentuated by the conflict in neighbouring Sudan. FRANCE...

On March 29, 1988, South African anti-apartheid activist Dulcie September was shot dead at close range in central Paris. In the 1970s, she had been imprisoned in her home country for her activities against the apartheid regime. Upon her release, she had been authorised to leave South Africa on the condition that she never return. September was the representative of Nelson Mandela's ANC party in France and yet she claimed to be followed and watched. What did the French secret services know?...

For a long time, the island of Jolo, one of the southernmost points of the Philippines archipelago, was off limits. It was the stronghold of one of the most violent terrorist movements in the world, Abu Sayyaf. In 2000, a group of 20 tourists were kidnapped in Malaysia and taken to Jolo. Journalists who covered the kidnapping were then also captured. Negotiations for their release took several months. Today, after 30 years of fighting with the Philippine army, Abu Sayyaf is almost...

For the past four years, FRANCE 24 has been closely following the reconstruction of Paris's Notre-Dame Cathedral following the devastating 2019 fire there. The year 2023 is a crucial phase for the rebuilding, as the cathedral's spire, which collapsed in the blaze, is slated to rise into the Paris skyline once again by the end of December. Our reporter Julien Sauvaget met the craftspeople who are rebuilding the spire in its original form. The restoration work has also allowed experts to carry...

The Ivorian beach resort of Grand-Bassam, some 40 kilometres from Abidjan, has become the symbol of a tragedy – that of the first major terrorist attack in Ivory Coast. On March 13, 2016, 19 people were killed there, including nine foreigners. A further 33 were injured. In December 2022, four men were sentenced to life imprisonment by the courts for aiding and abetting the terrorists. The alleged masterminds of the attack were sentenced in absentia. But the trial failed to shed any real light...